Reason Jesus must have been a real person

[Aliza]

Uhm... yes? I thought you've studied religion. Christians put right in the front of their bibles that it "comes from the original tongues." Christians believe that the Torah predates the Christian testament. They have no problem learning Latin, but learning Hebrew is too challenging for them. Wonder why.... And even if we can't agree to read the Jewish version, I can still make the case that Jesus wasn't a real person with their own Christian translation. In their zeal to keep as much of the original content as possible, while also trying to appeal to a mostly gentile audience, they left some rather revealing boo-boos in the text.

Ah yes, the Isaiah 7:14 debacle of mistranslations.  Please Aliza, do your magic and explain this to the good folks.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at Isaiah 7:14. I’m a little rusty here because religious debates had kind of come to a lull over on TTA, so forgive me if I skip any details. OP, you proposed that Jesus must have been a real person because his name was Jesus and not Immanuel and if they were painting him into the bible retroactively, then they’d have named him Immanuel, right? But Jewish prophecy does not place a prediction on the name of the Jewish messiah at all. The whole Isaiah thing was ripped out of context by later Christians who were trying to find "proof" for Jesus in the Jewish bible. They stumbled on a passage that, with a little editing, could work as a prophecy for Jesus based on the virgin story they had already begun telling.

1. If the Christians are taking the prophecy of Immanuel as a messianic prophecy, then under these conditions, Isaiah’s prophecy will not have come true and the entirety of his book should be discarded under the rules stipulated in Deuteronomy 18:20. (You may have to read a verse or two around 18:20. I read a different version than you. The numbers are close but not always exactly the same.) IF Isaiah was referring to the messiah in his 7:14 prophecy, and IF Jesus was the messiah, then Isaiah told a false prophecy and Christian should, by the rules established in the Torah, disregard the entirety of Isaiah's works.

2. See the thing is, Isaiah wasn’t talking about the Jewish messiah in his famous 7:14 prophecy. He was talking about a normal child who was, at the time, in the womb of a woman who was physically in his presence at the time that he said. He said (and this is reflected in the Hebrew) “that” woman, a specific woman who he could point to at that moment, was going to have a baby. She was likely already pregnant and likely the wife of King Ahaz. Read Isaiah. Go back a little and read what’s going on in the story. He’s not talking about a messiah at all! He’s telling the king of a warring faction that he’ll be triumphant, and that he shouldn’t lose hope because by the time that woman’s baby is old enough to know right from wrong, the war will be over.

3. There’s no virgin birth. The word virgin isn’t even used here. It just says “young woman,” and there are places in the bible where a young woman means a virgin and other places where it doesn’t. Just as in English, age is not an indicator of sexual status. If a girl loses her virginity at a young age, is she not still a young woman? If a spinster of 80 years of age never lost her virginity, would she be described as “young woman?” And just to further put a point on the meaning of the word used in this section, the same word for “young woman” is used elsewhere in the bible to describe an adulteress. In truth, Christians were trying to sell their virgin birth story to gentiles, so they took this section, changed the word young woman to virgin, and without reading the context, they told their flock that this text was proof that Jesus was foretold in the bible. –And then they had the nerve to say that the Jewish people missed or ignored this prophecy entirely, thereby denying Jesus his proper title as messiah. –Because somehow it’s the Jews who can’t read Hebrew.

4. Last point. Isaiah is talking in this passage to a king who is worried about a war. He’s trying to offer comfort and assurance to the king. He needs some kind of evidence that will be of use to the King. Why then, if the Christian translation is correct, would he say, “King! Don’t worry! You’ll win the war, and as proof, I will demonstrate my prophetic powers by predicting a virgin birth 700 years in the future. Just wait and see! It'll happen, and then you won't have to worry about the war anymore. I’m sure that’s really helpful to you right now. K, bye!” The prophecy was about what was going on at the time in Isaiah’s life. Not about the distant future and a simple reading of the text will reveal that.